California Building Industry Association

Fees and Costs

TCSD approves water connection fee increase

Atascadero News
Any new single-family home or other project requiring water hookups in Templeton will now face increased connection fees enacted to help pay for the Nacimiento Water Project. On Aug. 19, the Templeton Community Services District Board of Directors unanimously adopted the connection fee increases, said Bill Van Orden, TCSD acting general manager. The ordinance revises the district’s current water hookup fee schedule for residential units using a standard one-inch line from about $14,000 to $25,000 per unit. Templeton’s connection fees were last raised in 2005, when costs for residential hookups increased from $3,642 to $13,453 for a standard line. The ordinance has taken effect immediately.

Willow Road funding up for debate

San Luis Obispo Tribune
County supervisors said Tuesday they want the public’s input on how to find the $12 million still needed to build the proposed Willow Road freeway interchange in Nipomo. Supervisors unanimously approved the go-ahead for the county to hold public workshops and conduct a survey to better gauge the public’s interest in how to cover the funding needed. Options for covering the needed $12 million include road-improvement fees that would be levied on developers, and a community facilities district that would tax certain property owners. Jerry Bunin, legislative affairs director for the Home Builders Association of the Central Coast, said he hopes that new construction and current property owners would share the cost.

Ross Valley development fee hike studied

Marin Independent Journal
Driven by rising enrollment, the Ross Valley School District board is considering hiking development fees 33 percent for homes and 31 percent for businesses. The board Thursday will consider a proposal to increase its fee for home development in Fairfax and San Anselmo from $2.24 to $2.97 a square foot. The fee for building a 2,500-square-foot home would grow by $1,825, from $5,600 to $7,425. The increase would be the first in five years.

Growth/ Development

Camino plan goes Google

San Mateo Daily Journal
The mind-boggling amount of developments popping up along El Camino Real in San Mateo County are getting a little easier to visualize with the help of Google Earth, a free 3-D online mapping program. A recently completed map illustrates 91 projects either under development or in the planning processes in or around El Camino Real, Alameda de las Pulgas and Mission Street in Daly City. The projects range from bus realignment to the proposed ‘Transit Village’ in San Carlos. Many of the projects are included in the Grand Boulevard Initiative, which was responsible for creating the interactive map.

Land Use/ Planning

Preliminary plans for Santa Clara County Fairgrounds unveiled

KCBS
Plans to transform the county fairgrounds into a mix of park land, retail and housing should include a venue for large public events, Santa Clara County Supervisor Don Gage said Tuesday. Gage’s comments came as Catellus, the Colorado company chosen to build on the site, released preliminary drawings of how it hoped to develop the 150-acre property. While several on the board hope the revamped fairgrounds will be like Santana Row, an urban area people go to spend time even if they don’t necessarily plan to spend money, Gage noted that there were no other venues for the square dances, auto shows and other events that have come to define the space since 1939.

Project promises financial gain

Colusa Sun-Herald
Pacific Cascade Group, in conjunction with Colusa Heritage Partners, of Arbuckle, is not letting the housing slump stop them from their efforts to build a new community. While most developers around the state have mothballed their projects, Pacific Cascade is forging ahead with the idea of developing 2,600 acres at County Line Road, in southern Colusa County. The project calls for storefronts in a new downtown district east of Interstate 5, with an outer ring comprising of houses, condominiums and schools.

Market

More bank failures may be on the way, FDIC warns

Los Angeles Times
Federal regulators Tuesday boosted to $8.9 billion the estimated cost of IndyMac Bank's failure and prepared the public for more collapses, reporting that the number of troubled U.S. banks shot up 30 percent in just three months. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said that on June 30 there were 117 institutions on its "problem list," up from 90 on March 31 and the highest level in five years. The disclosures were part of a bleak portrait of the banking industry painted by the agency, which said earnings at commercial banks and savings and loans plunged 87 percent to $5 billion in the second quarter as institutions scrambled to cover bad mortgages and other loans.

FHA raises its premiums to insure repayment of mortgages

Wall Street Journal
The Federal Housing Administration, a U.S. agency that is rapidly shouldering more of the risk on home loans, raised the premiums it charges for insuring that mortgages will be repaid. In a posting on its Web site Tuesday, the FHA said the upfront premiums charged to most borrowers will be 1.75 percent of the loan amount, effective Oct. 1. That is up from the 1.5 percent that was in effect until July 14, when the FHA adopted a "risk-based" pricing system that created a range of charges depending on borrowers' credit scores and the amount of the down payment or equity they owned in the homes. In late July, Congress approved a housing bill that included a provision requiring the FHA to revert to a standard premium at least until Oct. 1, 2009.

Five-year price picture isn't all doom and gloom

Sacramento Bee
The bottom may have fallen out of Sacramento home prices, but most owners are better off than five years ago, says a new federal analysis of the nation's home prices. Home prices remain 22 percent higher in El Dorado, Placer, Sacramento and Yolo counties than in 2003, according to the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight. They're 29 percent higher in Yuba and Sutter counties, said the second-quarter 2008 survey released Tuesday.

ZipRealty quarterly housing market index highlights year-over-year inventory levels

CNNMoney
The number of homes listed for sale in 18 major metropolitan markets across the U.S., as well as the number of homes that include a price reduction, rose 6 percent from June 2007 to June 2008, according to the national real estate brokerage ZipRealty. Additionally, the brokerage details a snapshot of "hot and cold zip codes" in six key markets based on the percentage of homes' list price compared to the final sale price, and the results of a market perception survey of buyers and sellers, as part of its Quarterly Housing Market Index, released Wednesday.

Housing downturn could be letting up

San Diego Union-Tribune
A key housing-price index released yesterday offered a glimmer of hope that the downward spiral might be slowing in some places, but San Diego and other once-high-flying cities have yet to see any return to stability. The Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller Home Price Index showed prices of single-family resale homes in 20 cities had dropped 0.5 percent from May to June, compared with a 0.9 percent decline from April to May. It was the smallest month-over-month decline in a year.

Congressional hearing on foreclosures set for Central Valley

Central Valley Business Times
The House Committee on Financial Services will hold a field hearing in Stockton on Sept. 6 to examine the effects of the foreclosure crisis on neighborhoods in California’s Central Valley. The committee was invited by Central Valley congressmen Jerry McNerney, D-Pleasanton, and Dennis Cardoza, D-Merced, who represent the region hardest hit in the nation by foreclosures. The field hearing will focus on federal, state, and local efforts to address foreclosure rates in the Central Valley.